Savings that would have normally been reserved for general budget needs—such as funding libraries or maintaining public parks—and are attributable to a national slowdown in health care costs, are now being credited to the health savings agreement.

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Budget for FY2016 proposes to borrow an additional $1.8 billion from public employee pension funds in coming years. This proposal adds to taxpayers’ long-run costs and risks weakening the fiscal condition of the funds.

As New York’s elected officials consider options for balancing budgets in the face of record deficits, they should eliminate a public employee fringe benefit rarely offered anywhere else: reimbursement for Medicare Part B premiums.

New York provides a troubling example of how the inability to contain costs associated with a large municipal workforce imposes a greater burden on the most vulnerable populations, notably low-income children.

This report presents eight facts about retirement benefits for New York State and local employees intended to stimulate a substantive discourse on pursuing changes to prevent underfunding of the pension systems and to make retirement benefits more fair and affordable.

This report describes the organization and financing of the union welfare funds, identifies and documents three problems with the current arrangements – limited accountability, poor financial management and inefficient provision of benefits - and presents recommendations to improve the use of these payments and provide taxpayer savings.

The fiscal realities of the time have not deterred the Legislature from advancing dozens of bills enhancing benefits for State and local employees and retirees. Three were already sent to you for consideration this week; another will be shortly. We are writing to ask that you veto them.

Pension contributions this year will cost the state government alone $1.7 billion in fiscal year 2010-11 -- an amount already set to grow 85 percent, to $3.2 billion, by 2014. How much higher must it go before the Legislature puts the taxpayers ahead of special interests?

While the State and local governments struggle to pay for current salaries and fringe benefits of public employees and to fully fund the pension system for retirees - resorting to a "borrowing" scheme to stretch out required payments - the State Legislature has remained undeterred in introducing and acting upon bills that would add even more costs in the 2010 session.